VH1 Bringing Back ‘Storytellers’, Beginning With Ed Sheeran

VH1 is bringing back one of its most popular original series, Storytellers. The show features artists performing their best-known songs in intimate settings, and telling the stories and origins behind each song to the audience, making for an unplugged, up-close experience.

In resurrecting the show, which hasn’t aired since 2012, VH1 has announced that Ed Sheeran will headline the first episode for 2015, with more artists to be announced for subsequent episodes airing later this year.

However, the format for the 2015 version of Storytellers will be slightly different from the Storytellers you might remember.

For the first time, the show will broadcast live. Secondly, the show will originate from a venue chosen by the artist due to its personal significance to them. Lastly, VH1 will stream an exclusive 30-minute after show with the artist after each episode.

For his venue, Sheeran has chosen Whelan’s in Dublin, Ireland. It’s a venue with a lot of emotional significance for Sheeran, since this was the theater where he first watched Damien Rice live, an experience he credits with changing his entire life.

“It’s amazing to come back to perform at a place that means so much to me personally,” said Sheeran. “I was only about 11 or 12 years old when I saw Damien [Rice] play at Whelan’s, and that night literally changed my life. The time he spent talking with me after the show made all the difference. It inspired me in a way that I only hope to do for someone else.”

Sheeran will perform for an intimate crowd of just 400 fans, going over some of his biggest hits from X, such as “Don’t” and “Thinking Out Loud”. While not confirmed, given that Storytellers often serves as a form of career retrospective, it’s likely he’ll also dip into tracks from his previous album, +, such as “Lego House” and “The A Team”.

Storytellers Live with Ed Sheeran will premiere January 24th on VH1, a week before the 57th Grammy Awards, making this the first major music event of 2015. For what it’s worth, I couldn’t possibly be more excited about this. Seriously, the only thing better than Ed Sheeran is an acoustic Ed Sheeran.

That said, I’m very curious to find out what other artists VH1 has lined up for future episodes, since there’s a wealth of people they could potentially get for this show. They’ve had a wide variety of artists in the past, from rappers to country artists, so I’d love to see that kind of variety continue. Personally, I’d love to see Labrinth get a special, although I’m not sure he’s big enough in the States to warrant it, unfortunately.

Which other artists would you like to see get their own Storytellers special? Sound off in the comments!